During the past fifty years, certain trends in our workforce have been continued with increased concern by many. First, as work skills have become more specialized and knowledge more important to worker performance, the workforce has by necessity become more mobile as workers often move great distances to accept the next job or position. Where once family, close friends, and colleagues were within walking distance, they now are often very spread out geographically. Second, the average number of hours per week that workers are working has increased so that workers often find it more and more difficult to maintain close connections with family, friends, and community. Third, as technology has been eliminating mundane, routine tasks from the workplace and dramatically decreasing the time required to complete other tasks, workers are working at a faster pace with less time to think about and make good decisions with a high degree of confidence. Finally, the focus of many successful companies is global, and these companies are controlling greater and greater amounts of human capital and other resources.
In recent years, the health profession has recognized these trends as leading towards higher job related stress and job dissatisfaction, as workers are having more difficulty balancing their job related demands with the demands and needs of their personal lives. In effect, the emotional and spiritual support network and feeling of belonging to or identity with a community that most workers once enjoyed is missing in many present day workers' lives. Often these workers are unaware of this until after an unmanageable personal problem or even a health crisis arises, or a tragedy or other disaster occurs in the community. This loss of community is what some religious groups might call an absence of fellowship. By staying in connection with one another and by coming together for one another when there is a need, a greater sense of security can be nurtured with its resulting health and productivity benefits. Moreover, by having corporate sponsorship for these kinds of activities, workers gain a greater appreciation for and increased commitment to the corporate sponsor in addition to a greater sense of personal fulfillment with respect to non-vocational or more spiritual aspects of their lives.
Although the Internet is a tool that allows people to work further apart from one another, it is also a tool that can bring people together when they are apart. The Internet has been an important network resource for people to obtain information and solicit help that is located at a distance or otherwise not conveniently located. For example, workers can get company data or advice located at another physical site or send someone an email correspondence to convey news or motivate participation and involvement. Technology has now advanced far enough so that users can talk to one another and transmit still pictures or video. Moreover, with the ever-increasing prevalence of the Internet, more and more people communicate via this medium.
The vast majority of communications over the Internet take the form of emails sent between individuals and individuals seeking news from websites. It is well known that emails also can be broadcast from one person to any number of recipients by including all of the necessary addresses in the email. Almost all email programs allow for groups of recipients to be identified by collecting a series of emails under a single group name such that the email program automatically includes all of the individual group addresses whenever the group name is used in the email address. While email has improved the ability for groups of people to stay in touch with one another, the logistics for organizing and communicating among larger groups is often cumbersome with conventional email programs. Employee portals are also very popular, as can be other company websites having end points of particular interest. The downfall of these is that the communication is usually top-down instead of bottom-up, as the employee portal is intended to fulfill needs of the company rather than non-vocational needs of the workers. In addition, because of the nature of competitive marketplaces, companies are cautious about enabling outside parties to publish non-company related content or otherwise communicate to others inside or outside the organization using the company's website and/or other resources.
Examples of web content publishing for workers and customers are employee portals and company website frameworks developed by Zope Corporation, employee portals developed by Workscape, and an illustration of an employee portal at contractsxml.org/c3pol/fianl/cr. Each of these, however, is intended to satisfy the business and/or human resources objectives of the sponsoring organization and is internally controlled and maintained. Access to content by someone outside the organization may be possible but publishing to the end points is generally not permitted. Two examples of patented networked community communication systems are Marks, U.S. Pat. No. 5,956,491, Group Communications Multiplexing System, and Yokobori et al., U.S. application Pub. No. 2001/0029501 A1, Network Community Supporting Method and System. Marks discloses a complex computer system and related software that allows for Internet based synchronous, multimedia communication without using an Internet service provider. Yokobori also discloses complex software, for analyzing group or community communications to better understand the characteristics, intentions, and needs of the members of the community for managing the community. Neither provides a simple system based on commonly available or commonplace Internet technology to publicize non-vocational activities into the work environment of the workers and thereby encourage workers to participate and keep the workers and their organizations interested and involved in these non-vocational activities.
It would be advantageous to have a simple Internet based system to publish non-vocational activities into work environments whereby organizations sponsor Internet website end points for workers to stay informed about non-vocational activities and communicate to others about such activities and events.